October 2008 Archives

The indices had a good day yesterday but none of them has yet to surpass the highs put in around October 20th. The futures are a little weak right now but some backing & filling might actually be healthy. It would be nice for the bulls if they could keep the indices above their downrad sloping September trendlines.

On Today's Calendar:

• 9:45 -- Chicago PMI
• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The market's reversing yesterday's late selloff. Let's see if the bulls can push the indices above yesterday's highs and start to leave those September trendlines in the dust.

On Today's Calendar:

• nothing

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

It's usually a pretty safe bet that we'll get wild swings after Fed decision but we got a little extra today. An apparently bogus report on GE's 2009 outlook threw the market into a nose dive in the last 15 minutes of a day. That late selloff turned what was looking like some pretty good follow-through into what looks like failing retracements to trendlines on the Nasdaq and Russell 2000. All three of the charts below look like shorts to me under today's low.

The small caps made up for lagging yesterday with their outperformance today.

no changes

The futures are basically flat this morning but today's all about the Federal Reserve and the reaction to their interest rate decision at 2:15.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:35 -- Crude Inventories
• 2:15 -- FOMC Policy Statement

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We got another one of those vicious bear market rallies today. This one felt a lot like the one we had on October 13th. At the time it seemed like a game changing move but we know what happened to that rally. So once again we're looking a a good start that needs some follow-through. Despite the huge gains today there's still plenty of overhead resistance...

Some improvements in the short term trends but the small caps are lagging noticeably though. They've swung from leaders to laggards over the last few weeks.

Here's a story mainly for other bloggers...

Long time readers may remember that I've not been happy with Yahoo for a long time. I think it was about 4 years ago when they first contacted me about their plans to add blogs to Yahoo Finance. Those plans never came to fruition. I've also not been happy about the fact that their search engine doesn't seem to know my site exists. Well it looks like things are changing at Yahoo. They're now linking out to blogs and other sites just like the major newspapers started doing a few weeks ago.

This change is due to their acquisition of BuzzTracker. Here's a short interview with BuzzTracker's founder, Alan Warms, about the Yahoo News integration:

And here's a screen capture of the new "Most Blogged" feature that I saw this morning:

I doubt this stuff will help their stock recover but at least it'll make some bloggers happy.

It's all smiles on CNBC so you know we must be set to gap up this morning. In this recent global death spiral I've been wondering if our market has been following the foreign markets or were they following us. For today at least we're clearly following them. The bulls really need to build on this early strength and start making some higher highs and breaking some downtrends. As I write this QQQQ is still about 60 cents below yesterday's high. SO breaking that barrier would be a good start.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Consumer Confidence

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

There's a show airing on PBS this week that may interest some of you -- NOVA: Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension

What do movie special effects, the stock market, and heart attacks have in common? They are connected by a revolutionary new branch of math called fractals, which changed the way we see the world and opened up a vast new territory to scientific analysis and understanding. Meet the mathematicians who developed fractals from a mere curiosity to an approach that touches nearly every branch of understanding, including the fate of our universe.

On a related note, here's a video with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Benoit B. Mandelbrot, who's considered the 'father of fractals' and Taleb's mentor. In it they say that the current financial situation may the worst since the American Revolution.

And for even more extra credit see Mandelbrot's book The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward and/or his lecture on Fractals in Science, Engineering and Finance.

We had a particularly ugly close to today's session. The only minor positive today was that volume was relatively light. It's uncanny how often the indices are near important technical levels just ahead of a Fed meeting. It seems that the S&P and Dow are destined to touch their October 10th lows but they're taking their sweet time in getting there. The S&P is only 9 points away from that low so it's almost guaranteed to touch it tomorrow. Perhaps that will spark some interesting action -- either another leg down or some serious buying.

I guess the VIX is headed to infinity ;-)

No changes

Despite last Friday's limit-down futures the Dow and S&P 500 managed to stay above their October lows. This morning the futures have come roaring back to near unchanged after some serious overnight weakness. So perhaps those October lows will be safe for at least another few hours...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- New Home Sales

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The indices had a good day yesterday but none of them has yet to surpass the highs put in around October 20th. The futures are a little weak right now but some backing & filling might actually be healthy. It would be nice for the bulls if they could keep the indices above their downrad sloping September trendlines.

On Today's Calendar:

• 9:45 -- Chicago PMI
• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The market's reversing yesterday's late selloff. Let's see if the bulls can push the indices above yesterday's highs and start to leave those September trendlines in the dust.

On Today's Calendar:

• nothing

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

It's usually a pretty safe bet that we'll get wild swings after Fed decision but we got a little extra today. An apparently bogus report on GE's 2009 outlook threw the market into a nose dive in the last 15 minutes of a day. That late selloff turned what was looking like some pretty good follow-through into what looks like failing retracements to trendlines on the Nasdaq and Russell 2000. All three of the charts below look like shorts to me under today's low.

The small caps made up for lagging yesterday with their outperformance today.

no changes

The futures are basically flat this morning but today's all about the Federal Reserve and the reaction to their interest rate decision at 2:15.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:35 -- Crude Inventories
• 2:15 -- FOMC Policy Statement

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We got another one of those vicious bear market rallies today. This one felt a lot like the one we had on October 13th. At the time it seemed like a game changing move but we know what happened to that rally. So once again we're looking a a good start that needs some follow-through. Despite the huge gains today there's still plenty of overhead resistance...

Some improvements in the short term trends but the small caps are lagging noticeably though. They've swung from leaders to laggards over the last few weeks.

Here's a story mainly for other bloggers...

Long time readers may remember that I've not been happy with Yahoo for a long time. I think it was about 4 years ago when they first contacted me about their plans to add blogs to Yahoo Finance. Those plans never came to fruition. I've also not been happy about the fact that their search engine doesn't seem to know my site exists. Well it looks like things are changing at Yahoo. They're now linking out to blogs and other sites just like the major newspapers started doing a few weeks ago.

This change is due to their acquisition of BuzzTracker. Here's a short interview with BuzzTracker's founder, Alan Warms, about the Yahoo News integration:

And here's a screen capture of the new "Most Blogged" feature that I saw this morning:

I doubt this stuff will help their stock recover but at least it'll make some bloggers happy.

It's all smiles on CNBC so you know we must be set to gap up this morning. In this recent global death spiral I've been wondering if our market has been following the foreign markets or were they following us. For today at least we're clearly following them. The bulls really need to build on this early strength and start making some higher highs and breaking some downtrends. As I write this QQQQ is still about 60 cents below yesterday's high. SO breaking that barrier would be a good start.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Consumer Confidence

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

There's a show airing on PBS this week that may interest some of you -- NOVA: Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension

What do movie special effects, the stock market, and heart attacks have in common? They are connected by a revolutionary new branch of math called fractals, which changed the way we see the world and opened up a vast new territory to scientific analysis and understanding. Meet the mathematicians who developed fractals from a mere curiosity to an approach that touches nearly every branch of understanding, including the fate of our universe.

On a related note, here's a video with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Benoit B. Mandelbrot, who's considered the 'father of fractals' and Taleb's mentor. In it they say that the current financial situation may the worst since the American Revolution.

And for even more extra credit see Mandelbrot's book The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward and/or his lecture on Fractals in Science, Engineering and Finance.

We had a particularly ugly close to today's session. The only minor positive today was that volume was relatively light. It's uncanny how often the indices are near important technical levels just ahead of a Fed meeting. It seems that the S&P and Dow are destined to touch their October 10th lows but they're taking their sweet time in getting there. The S&P is only 9 points away from that low so it's almost guaranteed to touch it tomorrow. Perhaps that will spark some interesting action -- either another leg down or some serious buying.

I guess the VIX is headed to infinity ;-)

No changes

Despite last Friday's limit-down futures the Dow and S&P 500 managed to stay above their October lows. This morning the futures have come roaring back to near unchanged after some serious overnight weakness. So perhaps those October lows will be safe for at least another few hours...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- New Home Sales

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The indices had a good day yesterday but none of them has yet to surpass the highs put in around October 20th. The futures are a little weak right now but some backing & filling might actually be healthy. It would be nice for the bulls if they could keep the indices above their downrad sloping September trendlines.

On Today's Calendar:

• 9:45 -- Chicago PMI
• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The market's reversing yesterday's late selloff. Let's see if the bulls can push the indices above yesterday's highs and start to leave those September trendlines in the dust.

On Today's Calendar:

• nothing

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

It's usually a pretty safe bet that we'll get wild swings after Fed decision but we got a little extra today. An apparently bogus report on GE's 2009 outlook threw the market into a nose dive in the last 15 minutes of a day. That late selloff turned what was looking like some pretty good follow-through into what looks like failing retracements to trendlines on the Nasdaq and Russell 2000. All three of the charts below look like shorts to me under today's low.

The small caps made up for lagging yesterday with their outperformance today.

no changes

The futures are basically flat this morning but today's all about the Federal Reserve and the reaction to their interest rate decision at 2:15.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:35 -- Crude Inventories
• 2:15 -- FOMC Policy Statement

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We got another one of those vicious bear market rallies today. This one felt a lot like the one we had on October 13th. At the time it seemed like a game changing move but we know what happened to that rally. So once again we're looking a a good start that needs some follow-through. Despite the huge gains today there's still plenty of overhead resistance...

Some improvements in the short term trends but the small caps are lagging noticeably though. They've swung from leaders to laggards over the last few weeks.

Here's a story mainly for other bloggers...

Long time readers may remember that I've not been happy with Yahoo for a long time. I think it was about 4 years ago when they first contacted me about their plans to add blogs to Yahoo Finance. Those plans never came to fruition. I've also not been happy about the fact that their search engine doesn't seem to know my site exists. Well it looks like things are changing at Yahoo. They're now linking out to blogs and other sites just like the major newspapers started doing a few weeks ago.

This change is due to their acquisition of BuzzTracker. Here's a short interview with BuzzTracker's founder, Alan Warms, about the Yahoo News integration:

And here's a screen capture of the new "Most Blogged" feature that I saw this morning:

I doubt this stuff will help their stock recover but at least it'll make some bloggers happy.

It's all smiles on CNBC so you know we must be set to gap up this morning. In this recent global death spiral I've been wondering if our market has been following the foreign markets or were they following us. For today at least we're clearly following them. The bulls really need to build on this early strength and start making some higher highs and breaking some downtrends. As I write this QQQQ is still about 60 cents below yesterday's high. SO breaking that barrier would be a good start.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Consumer Confidence

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

There's a show airing on PBS this week that may interest some of you -- NOVA: Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension

What do movie special effects, the stock market, and heart attacks have in common? They are connected by a revolutionary new branch of math called fractals, which changed the way we see the world and opened up a vast new territory to scientific analysis and understanding. Meet the mathematicians who developed fractals from a mere curiosity to an approach that touches nearly every branch of understanding, including the fate of our universe.

On a related note, here's a video with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Benoit B. Mandelbrot, who's considered the 'father of fractals' and Taleb's mentor. In it they say that the current financial situation may the worst since the American Revolution.

And for even more extra credit see Mandelbrot's book The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward and/or his lecture on Fractals in Science, Engineering and Finance.

We had a particularly ugly close to today's session. The only minor positive today was that volume was relatively light. It's uncanny how often the indices are near important technical levels just ahead of a Fed meeting. It seems that the S&P and Dow are destined to touch their October 10th lows but they're taking their sweet time in getting there. The S&P is only 9 points away from that low so it's almost guaranteed to touch it tomorrow. Perhaps that will spark some interesting action -- either another leg down or some serious buying.

I guess the VIX is headed to infinity ;-)

No changes

Despite last Friday's limit-down futures the Dow and S&P 500 managed to stay above their October lows. This morning the futures have come roaring back to near unchanged after some serious overnight weakness. So perhaps those October lows will be safe for at least another few hours...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- New Home Sales

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The indices had a good day yesterday but none of them has yet to surpass the highs put in around October 20th. The futures are a little weak right now but some backing & filling might actually be healthy. It would be nice for the bulls if they could keep the indices above their downrad sloping September trendlines.

On Today's Calendar:

• 9:45 -- Chicago PMI
• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The market's reversing yesterday's late selloff. Let's see if the bulls can push the indices above yesterday's highs and start to leave those September trendlines in the dust.

On Today's Calendar:

• nothing

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

It's usually a pretty safe bet that we'll get wild swings after Fed decision but we got a little extra today. An apparently bogus report on GE's 2009 outlook threw the market into a nose dive in the last 15 minutes of a day. That late selloff turned what was looking like some pretty good follow-through into what looks like failing retracements to trendlines on the Nasdaq and Russell 2000. All three of the charts below look like shorts to me under today's low.

The small caps made up for lagging yesterday with their outperformance today.

no changes

The futures are basically flat this morning but today's all about the Federal Reserve and the reaction to their interest rate decision at 2:15.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:35 -- Crude Inventories
• 2:15 -- FOMC Policy Statement

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We got another one of those vicious bear market rallies today. This one felt a lot like the one we had on October 13th. At the time it seemed like a game changing move but we know what happened to that rally. So once again we're looking a a good start that needs some follow-through. Despite the huge gains today there's still plenty of overhead resistance...

Some improvements in the short term trends but the small caps are lagging noticeably though. They've swung from leaders to laggards over the last few weeks.

Here's a story mainly for other bloggers...

Long time readers may remember that I've not been happy with Yahoo for a long time. I think it was about 4 years ago when they first contacted me about their plans to add blogs to Yahoo Finance. Those plans never came to fruition. I've also not been happy about the fact that their search engine doesn't seem to know my site exists. Well it looks like things are changing at Yahoo. They're now linking out to blogs and other sites just like the major newspapers started doing a few weeks ago.

This change is due to their acquisition of BuzzTracker. Here's a short interview with BuzzTracker's founder, Alan Warms, about the Yahoo News integration:

And here's a screen capture of the new "Most Blogged" feature that I saw this morning:

I doubt this stuff will help their stock recover but at least it'll make some bloggers happy.

It's all smiles on CNBC so you know we must be set to gap up this morning. In this recent global death spiral I've been wondering if our market has been following the foreign markets or were they following us. For today at least we're clearly following them. The bulls really need to build on this early strength and start making some higher highs and breaking some downtrends. As I write this QQQQ is still about 60 cents below yesterday's high. SO breaking that barrier would be a good start.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Consumer Confidence

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

There's a show airing on PBS this week that may interest some of you -- NOVA: Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension

What do movie special effects, the stock market, and heart attacks have in common? They are connected by a revolutionary new branch of math called fractals, which changed the way we see the world and opened up a vast new territory to scientific analysis and understanding. Meet the mathematicians who developed fractals from a mere curiosity to an approach that touches nearly every branch of understanding, including the fate of our universe.

On a related note, here's a video with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Benoit B. Mandelbrot, who's considered the 'father of fractals' and Taleb's mentor. In it they say that the current financial situation may the worst since the American Revolution.

And for even more extra credit see Mandelbrot's book The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward and/or his lecture on Fractals in Science, Engineering and Finance.

We had a particularly ugly close to today's session. The only minor positive today was that volume was relatively light. It's uncanny how often the indices are near important technical levels just ahead of a Fed meeting. It seems that the S&P and Dow are destined to touch their October 10th lows but they're taking their sweet time in getting there. The S&P is only 9 points away from that low so it's almost guaranteed to touch it tomorrow. Perhaps that will spark some interesting action -- either another leg down or some serious buying.

I guess the VIX is headed to infinity ;-)

No changes

Despite last Friday's limit-down futures the Dow and S&P 500 managed to stay above their October lows. This morning the futures have come roaring back to near unchanged after some serious overnight weakness. So perhaps those October lows will be safe for at least another few hours...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- New Home Sales

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The indices had a good day yesterday but none of them has yet to surpass the highs put in around October 20th. The futures are a little weak right now but some backing & filling might actually be healthy. It would be nice for the bulls if they could keep the indices above their downrad sloping September trendlines.

On Today's Calendar:

• 9:45 -- Chicago PMI
• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The market's reversing yesterday's late selloff. Let's see if the bulls can push the indices above yesterday's highs and start to leave those September trendlines in the dust.

On Today's Calendar:

• nothing

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

It's usually a pretty safe bet that we'll get wild swings after Fed decision but we got a little extra today. An apparently bogus report on GE's 2009 outlook threw the market into a nose dive in the last 15 minutes of a day. That late selloff turned what was looking like some pretty good follow-through into what looks like failing retracements to trendlines on the Nasdaq and Russell 2000. All three of the charts below look like shorts to me under today's low.

The small caps made up for lagging yesterday with their outperformance today.

no changes

The futures are basically flat this morning but today's all about the Federal Reserve and the reaction to their interest rate decision at 2:15.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:35 -- Crude Inventories
• 2:15 -- FOMC Policy Statement

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We got another one of those vicious bear market rallies today. This one felt a lot like the one we had on October 13th. At the time it seemed like a game changing move but we know what happened to that rally. So once again we're looking a a good start that needs some follow-through. Despite the huge gains today there's still plenty of overhead resistance...

Some improvements in the short term trends but the small caps are lagging noticeably though. They've swung from leaders to laggards over the last few weeks.

Here's a story mainly for other bloggers...

Long time readers may remember that I've not been happy with Yahoo for a long time. I think it was about 4 years ago when they first contacted me about their plans to add blogs to Yahoo Finance. Those plans never came to fruition. I've also not been happy about the fact that their search engine doesn't seem to know my site exists. Well it looks like things are changing at Yahoo. They're now linking out to blogs and other sites just like the major newspapers started doing a few weeks ago.

This change is due to their acquisition of BuzzTracker. Here's a short interview with BuzzTracker's founder, Alan Warms, about the Yahoo News integration:

And here's a screen capture of the new "Most Blogged" feature that I saw this morning:

I doubt this stuff will help their stock recover but at least it'll make some bloggers happy.

It's all smiles on CNBC so you know we must be set to gap up this morning. In this recent global death spiral I've been wondering if our market has been following the foreign markets or were they following us. For today at least we're clearly following them. The bulls really need to build on this early strength and start making some higher highs and breaking some downtrends. As I write this QQQQ is still about 60 cents below yesterday's high. SO breaking that barrier would be a good start.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Consumer Confidence

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

There's a show airing on PBS this week that may interest some of you -- NOVA: Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension

What do movie special effects, the stock market, and heart attacks have in common? They are connected by a revolutionary new branch of math called fractals, which changed the way we see the world and opened up a vast new territory to scientific analysis and understanding. Meet the mathematicians who developed fractals from a mere curiosity to an approach that touches nearly every branch of understanding, including the fate of our universe.

On a related note, here's a video with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Benoit B. Mandelbrot, who's considered the 'father of fractals' and Taleb's mentor. In it they say that the current financial situation may the worst since the American Revolution.

And for even more extra credit see Mandelbrot's book The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward and/or his lecture on Fractals in Science, Engineering and Finance.

We had a particularly ugly close to today's session. The only minor positive today was that volume was relatively light. It's uncanny how often the indices are near important technical levels just ahead of a Fed meeting. It seems that the S&P and Dow are destined to touch their October 10th lows but they're taking their sweet time in getting there. The S&P is only 9 points away from that low so it's almost guaranteed to touch it tomorrow. Perhaps that will spark some interesting action -- either another leg down or some serious buying.

I guess the VIX is headed to infinity ;-)

No changes

Despite last Friday's limit-down futures the Dow and S&P 500 managed to stay above their October lows. This morning the futures have come roaring back to near unchanged after some serious overnight weakness. So perhaps those October lows will be safe for at least another few hours...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- New Home Sales

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The indices had a good day yesterday but none of them has yet to surpass the highs put in around October 20th. The futures are a little weak right now but some backing & filling might actually be healthy. It would be nice for the bulls if they could keep the indices above their downrad sloping September trendlines.

On Today's Calendar:

• 9:45 -- Chicago PMI
• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The market's reversing yesterday's late selloff. Let's see if the bulls can push the indices above yesterday's highs and start to leave those September trendlines in the dust.

On Today's Calendar:

• nothing

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

It's usually a pretty safe bet that we'll get wild swings after Fed decision but we got a little extra today. An apparently bogus report on GE's 2009 outlook threw the market into a nose dive in the last 15 minutes of a day. That late selloff turned what was looking like some pretty good follow-through into what looks like failing retracements to trendlines on the Nasdaq and Russell 2000. All three of the charts below look like shorts to me under today's low.

The small caps made up for lagging yesterday with their outperformance today.

no changes

The futures are basically flat this morning but today's all about the Federal Reserve and the reaction to their interest rate decision at 2:15.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:35 -- Crude Inventories
• 2:15 -- FOMC Policy Statement

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We got another one of those vicious bear market rallies today. This one felt a lot like the one we had on October 13th. At the time it seemed like a game changing move but we know what happened to that rally. So once again we're looking a a good start that needs some follow-through. Despite the huge gains today there's still plenty of overhead resistance...

Some improvements in the short term trends but the small caps are lagging noticeably though. They've swung from leaders to laggards over the last few weeks.

Here's a story mainly for other bloggers...

Long time readers may remember that I've not been happy with Yahoo for a long time. I think it was about 4 years ago when they first contacted me about their plans to add blogs to Yahoo Finance. Those plans never came to fruition. I've also not been happy about the fact that their search engine doesn't seem to know my site exists. Well it looks like things are changing at Yahoo. They're now linking out to blogs and other sites just like the major newspapers started doing a few weeks ago.

This change is due to their acquisition of BuzzTracker. Here's a short interview with BuzzTracker's founder, Alan Warms, about the Yahoo News integration:

And here's a screen capture of the new "Most Blogged" feature that I saw this morning:

I doubt this stuff will help their stock recover but at least it'll make some bloggers happy.

It's all smiles on CNBC so you know we must be set to gap up this morning. In this recent global death spiral I've been wondering if our market has been following the foreign markets or were they following us. For today at least we're clearly following them. The bulls really need to build on this early strength and start making some higher highs and breaking some downtrends. As I write this QQQQ is still about 60 cents below yesterday's high. SO breaking that barrier would be a good start.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Consumer Confidence

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

There's a show airing on PBS this week that may interest some of you -- NOVA: Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension

What do movie special effects, the stock market, and heart attacks have in common? They are connected by a revolutionary new branch of math called fractals, which changed the way we see the world and opened up a vast new territory to scientific analysis and understanding. Meet the mathematicians who developed fractals from a mere curiosity to an approach that touches nearly every branch of understanding, including the fate of our universe.

On a related note, here's a video with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Benoit B. Mandelbrot, who's considered the 'father of fractals' and Taleb's mentor. In it they say that the current financial situation may the worst since the American Revolution.

And for even more extra credit see Mandelbrot's book The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward and/or his lecture on Fractals in Science, Engineering and Finance.

We had a particularly ugly close to today's session. The only minor positive today was that volume was relatively light. It's uncanny how often the indices are near important technical levels just ahead of a Fed meeting. It seems that the S&P and Dow are destined to touch their October 10th lows but they're taking their sweet time in getting there. The S&P is only 9 points away from that low so it's almost guaranteed to touch it tomorrow. Perhaps that will spark some interesting action -- either another leg down or some serious buying.

I guess the VIX is headed to infinity ;-)

No changes

Despite last Friday's limit-down futures the Dow and S&P 500 managed to stay above their October lows. This morning the futures have come roaring back to near unchanged after some serious overnight weakness. So perhaps those October lows will be safe for at least another few hours...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- New Home Sales

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The indices had a good day yesterday but none of them has yet to surpass the highs put in around October 20th. The futures are a little weak right now but some backing & filling might actually be healthy. It would be nice for the bulls if they could keep the indices above their downrad sloping September trendlines.

On Today's Calendar:

• 9:45 -- Chicago PMI
• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The market's reversing yesterday's late selloff. Let's see if the bulls can push the indices above yesterday's highs and start to leave those September trendlines in the dust.

On Today's Calendar:

• nothing

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

It's usually a pretty safe bet that we'll get wild swings after Fed decision but we got a little extra today. An apparently bogus report on GE's 2009 outlook threw the market into a nose dive in the last 15 minutes of a day. That late selloff turned what was looking like some pretty good follow-through into what looks like failing retracements to trendlines on the Nasdaq and Russell 2000. All three of the charts below look like shorts to me under today's low.

The small caps made up for lagging yesterday with their outperformance today.

no changes

The futures are basically flat this morning but today's all about the Federal Reserve and the reaction to their interest rate decision at 2:15.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:35 -- Crude Inventories
• 2:15 -- FOMC Policy Statement

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We got another one of those vicious bear market rallies today. This one felt a lot like the one we had on October 13th. At the time it seemed like a game changing move but we know what happened to that rally. So once again we're looking a a good start that needs some follow-through. Despite the huge gains today there's still plenty of overhead resistance...

Some improvements in the short term trends but the small caps are lagging noticeably though. They've swung from leaders to laggards over the last few weeks.

Here's a story mainly for other bloggers...

Long time readers may remember that I've not been happy with Yahoo for a long time. I think it was about 4 years ago when they first contacted me about their plans to add blogs to Yahoo Finance. Those plans never came to fruition. I've also not been happy about the fact that their search engine doesn't seem to know my site exists. Well it looks like things are changing at Yahoo. They're now linking out to blogs and other sites just like the major newspapers started doing a few weeks ago.

This change is due to their acquisition of BuzzTracker. Here's a short interview with BuzzTracker's founder, Alan Warms, about the Yahoo News integration:

And here's a screen capture of the new "Most Blogged" feature that I saw this morning:

I doubt this stuff will help their stock recover but at least it'll make some bloggers happy.

It's all smiles on CNBC so you know we must be set to gap up this morning. In this recent global death spiral I've been wondering if our market has been following the foreign markets or were they following us. For today at least we're clearly following them. The bulls really need to build on this early strength and start making some higher highs and breaking some downtrends. As I write this QQQQ is still about 60 cents below yesterday's high. SO breaking that barrier would be a good start.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Consumer Confidence

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

There's a show airing on PBS this week that may interest some of you -- NOVA: Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension

What do movie special effects, the stock market, and heart attacks have in common? They are connected by a revolutionary new branch of math called fractals, which changed the way we see the world and opened up a vast new territory to scientific analysis and understanding. Meet the mathematicians who developed fractals from a mere curiosity to an approach that touches nearly every branch of understanding, including the fate of our universe.

On a related note, here's a video with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Benoit B. Mandelbrot, who's considered the 'father of fractals' and Taleb's mentor. In it they say that the current financial situation may the worst since the American Revolution.

And for even more extra credit see Mandelbrot's book The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward and/or his lecture on Fractals in Science, Engineering and Finance.

We had a particularly ugly close to today's session. The only minor positive today was that volume was relatively light. It's uncanny how often the indices are near important technical levels just ahead of a Fed meeting. It seems that the S&P and Dow are destined to touch their October 10th lows but they're taking their sweet time in getting there. The S&P is only 9 points away from that low so it's almost guaranteed to touch it tomorrow. Perhaps that will spark some interesting action -- either another leg down or some serious buying.

I guess the VIX is headed to infinity ;-)

No changes

Despite last Friday's limit-down futures the Dow and S&P 500 managed to stay above their October lows. This morning the futures have come roaring back to near unchanged after some serious overnight weakness. So perhaps those October lows will be safe for at least another few hours...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- New Home Sales

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The indices had a good day yesterday but none of them has yet to surpass the highs put in around October 20th. The futures are a little weak right now but some backing & filling might actually be healthy. It would be nice for the bulls if they could keep the indices above their downrad sloping September trendlines.

On Today's Calendar:

• 9:45 -- Chicago PMI
• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The market's reversing yesterday's late selloff. Let's see if the bulls can push the indices above yesterday's highs and start to leave those September trendlines in the dust.

On Today's Calendar:

• nothing

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

It's usually a pretty safe bet that we'll get wild swings after Fed decision but we got a little extra today. An apparently bogus report on GE's 2009 outlook threw the market into a nose dive in the last 15 minutes of a day. That late selloff turned what was looking like some pretty good follow-through into what looks like failing retracements to trendlines on the Nasdaq and Russell 2000. All three of the charts below look like shorts to me under today's low.

The small caps made up for lagging yesterday with their outperformance today.

no changes

The futures are basically flat this morning but today's all about the Federal Reserve and the reaction to their interest rate decision at 2:15.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:35 -- Crude Inventories
• 2:15 -- FOMC Policy Statement

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We got another one of those vicious bear market rallies today. This one felt a lot like the one we had on October 13th. At the time it seemed like a game changing move but we know what happened to that rally. So once again we're looking a a good start that needs some follow-through. Despite the huge gains today there's still plenty of overhead resistance...

Some improvements in the short term trends but the small caps are lagging noticeably though. They've swung from leaders to laggards over the last few weeks.

Here's a story mainly for other bloggers...

Long time readers may remember that I've not been happy with Yahoo for a long time. I think it was about 4 years ago when they first contacted me about their plans to add blogs to Yahoo Finance. Those plans never came to fruition. I've also not been happy about the fact that their search engine doesn't seem to know my site exists. Well it looks like things are changing at Yahoo. They're now linking out to blogs and other sites just like the major newspapers started doing a few weeks ago.

This change is due to their acquisition of BuzzTracker. Here's a short interview with BuzzTracker's founder, Alan Warms, about the Yahoo News integration:

And here's a screen capture of the new "Most Blogged" feature that I saw this morning:

I doubt this stuff will help their stock recover but at least it'll make some bloggers happy.

It's all smiles on CNBC so you know we must be set to gap up this morning. In this recent global death spiral I've been wondering if our market has been following the foreign markets or were they following us. For today at least we're clearly following them. The bulls really need to build on this early strength and start making some higher highs and breaking some downtrends. As I write this QQQQ is still about 60 cents below yesterday's high. SO breaking that barrier would be a good start.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Consumer Confidence

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

There's a show airing on PBS this week that may interest some of you -- NOVA: Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension

What do movie special effects, the stock market, and heart attacks have in common? They are connected by a revolutionary new branch of math called fractals, which changed the way we see the world and opened up a vast new territory to scientific analysis and understanding. Meet the mathematicians who developed fractals from a mere curiosity to an approach that touches nearly every branch of understanding, including the fate of our universe.

On a related note, here's a video with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Benoit B. Mandelbrot, who's considered the 'father of fractals' and Taleb's mentor. In it they say that the current financial situation may the worst since the American Revolution.

And for even more extra credit see Mandelbrot's book The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward and/or his lecture on Fractals in Science, Engineering and Finance.

We had a particularly ugly close to today's session. The only minor positive today was that volume was relatively light. It's uncanny how often the indices are near important technical levels just ahead of a Fed meeting. It seems that the S&P and Dow are destined to touch their October 10th lows but they're taking their sweet time in getting there. The S&P is only 9 points away from that low so it's almost guaranteed to touch it tomorrow. Perhaps that will spark some interesting action -- either another leg down or some serious buying.

I guess the VIX is headed to infinity ;-)

No changes

Despite last Friday's limit-down futures the Dow and S&P 500 managed to stay above their October lows. This morning the futures have come roaring back to near unchanged after some serious overnight weakness. So perhaps those October lows will be safe for at least another few hours...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- New Home Sales

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The indices had a good day yesterday but none of them has yet to surpass the highs put in around October 20th. The futures are a little weak right now but some backing & filling might actually be healthy. It would be nice for the bulls if they could keep the indices above their downrad sloping September trendlines.

On Today's Calendar:

• 9:45 -- Chicago PMI
• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The market's reversing yesterday's late selloff. Let's see if the bulls can push the indices above yesterday's highs and start to leave those September trendlines in the dust.

On Today's Calendar:

• nothing

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

It's usually a pretty safe bet that we'll get wild swings after Fed decision but we got a little extra today. An apparently bogus report on GE's 2009 outlook threw the market into a nose dive in the last 15 minutes of a day. That late selloff turned what was looking like some pretty good follow-through into what looks like failing retracements to trendlines on the Nasdaq and Russell 2000. All three of the charts below look like shorts to me under today's low.

The small caps made up for lagging yesterday with their outperformance today.

no changes

The futures are basically flat this morning but today's all about the Federal Reserve and the reaction to their interest rate decision at 2:15.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:35 -- Crude Inventories
• 2:15 -- FOMC Policy Statement

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We got another one of those vicious bear market rallies today. This one felt a lot like the one we had on October 13th. At the time it seemed like a game changing move but we know what happened to that rally. So once again we're looking a a good start that needs some follow-through. Despite the huge gains today there's still plenty of overhead resistance...

Some improvements in the short term trends but the small caps are lagging noticeably though. They've swung from leaders to laggards over the last few weeks.

Here's a story mainly for other bloggers...

Long time readers may remember that I've not been happy with Yahoo for a long time. I think it was about 4 years ago when they first contacted me about their plans to add blogs to Yahoo Finance. Those plans never came to fruition. I've also not been happy about the fact that their search engine doesn't seem to know my site exists. Well it looks like things are changing at Yahoo. They're now linking out to blogs and other sites just like the major newspapers started doing a few weeks ago.

This change is due to their acquisition of BuzzTracker. Here's a short interview with BuzzTracker's founder, Alan Warms, about the Yahoo News integration:

And here's a screen capture of the new "Most Blogged" feature that I saw this morning:

I doubt this stuff will help their stock recover but at least it'll make some bloggers happy.

It's all smiles on CNBC so you know we must be set to gap up this morning. In this recent global death spiral I've been wondering if our market has been following the foreign markets or were they following us. For today at least we're clearly following them. The bulls really need to build on this early strength and start making some higher highs and breaking some downtrends. As I write this QQQQ is still about 60 cents below yesterday's high. SO breaking that barrier would be a good start.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Consumer Confidence

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

There's a show airing on PBS this week that may interest some of you -- NOVA: Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension

What do movie special effects, the stock market, and heart attacks have in common? They are connected by a revolutionary new branch of math called fractals, which changed the way we see the world and opened up a vast new territory to scientific analysis and understanding. Meet the mathematicians who developed fractals from a mere curiosity to an approach that touches nearly every branch of understanding, including the fate of our universe.

On a related note, here's a video with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Benoit B. Mandelbrot, who's considered the 'father of fractals' and Taleb's mentor. In it they say that the current financial situation may the worst since the American Revolution.

And for even more extra credit see Mandelbrot's book The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward and/or his lecture on Fractals in Science, Engineering and Finance.

We had a particularly ugly close to today's session. The only minor positive today was that volume was relatively light. It's uncanny how often the indices are near important technical levels just ahead of a Fed meeting. It seems that the S&P and Dow are destined to touch their October 10th lows but they're taking their sweet time in getting there. The S&P is only 9 points away from that low so it's almost guaranteed to touch it tomorrow. Perhaps that will spark some interesting action -- either another leg down or some serious buying.

I guess the VIX is headed to infinity ;-)

No changes

Despite last Friday's limit-down futures the Dow and S&P 500 managed to stay above their October lows. This morning the futures have come roaring back to near unchanged after some serious overnight weakness. So perhaps those October lows will be safe for at least another few hours...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- New Home Sales

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The indices had a good day yesterday but none of them has yet to surpass the highs put in around October 20th. The futures are a little weak right now but some backing & filling might actually be healthy. It would be nice for the bulls if they could keep the indices above their downrad sloping September trendlines.

On Today's Calendar:

• 9:45 -- Chicago PMI
• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The market's reversing yesterday's late selloff. Let's see if the bulls can push the indices above yesterday's highs and start to leave those September trendlines in the dust.

On Today's Calendar:

• nothing

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

It's usually a pretty safe bet that we'll get wild swings after Fed decision but we got a little extra today. An apparently bogus report on GE's 2009 outlook threw the market into a nose dive in the last 15 minutes of a day. That late selloff turned what was looking like some pretty good follow-through into what looks like failing retracements to trendlines on the Nasdaq and Russell 2000. All three of the charts below look like shorts to me under today's low.

The small caps made up for lagging yesterday with their outperformance today.

no changes

The futures are basically flat this morning but today's all about the Federal Reserve and the reaction to their interest rate decision at 2:15.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:35 -- Crude Inventories
• 2:15 -- FOMC Policy Statement

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We got another one of those vicious bear market rallies today. This one felt a lot like the one we had on October 13th. At the time it seemed like a game changing move but we know what happened to that rally. So once again we're looking a a good start that needs some follow-through. Despite the huge gains today there's still plenty of overhead resistance...

Some improvements in the short term trends but the small caps are lagging noticeably though. They've swung from leaders to laggards over the last few weeks.

Here's a story mainly for other bloggers...

Long time readers may remember that I've not been happy with Yahoo for a long time. I think it was about 4 years ago when they first contacted me about their plans to add blogs to Yahoo Finance. Those plans never came to fruition. I've also not been happy about the fact that their search engine doesn't seem to know my site exists. Well it looks like things are changing at Yahoo. They're now linking out to blogs and other sites just like the major newspapers started doing a few weeks ago.

This change is due to their acquisition of BuzzTracker. Here's a short interview with BuzzTracker's founder, Alan Warms, about the Yahoo News integration:

And here's a screen capture of the new "Most Blogged" feature that I saw this morning:

I doubt this stuff will help their stock recover but at least it'll make some bloggers happy.

It's all smiles on CNBC so you know we must be set to gap up this morning. In this recent global death spiral I've been wondering if our market has been following the foreign markets or were they following us. For today at least we're clearly following them. The bulls really need to build on this early strength and start making some higher highs and breaking some downtrends. As I write this QQQQ is still about 60 cents below yesterday's high. SO breaking that barrier would be a good start.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Consumer Confidence

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

There's a show airing on PBS this week that may interest some of you -- NOVA: Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension

What do movie special effects, the stock market, and heart attacks have in common? They are connected by a revolutionary new branch of math called fractals, which changed the way we see the world and opened up a vast new territory to scientific analysis and understanding. Meet the mathematicians who developed fractals from a mere curiosity to an approach that touches nearly every branch of understanding, including the fate of our universe.

On a related note, here's a video with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Benoit B. Mandelbrot, who's considered the 'father of fractals' and Taleb's mentor. In it they say that the current financial situation may the worst since the American Revolution.

And for even more extra credit see Mandelbrot's book The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward and/or his lecture on Fractals in Science, Engineering and Finance.

We had a particularly ugly close to today's session. The only minor positive today was that volume was relatively light. It's uncanny how often the indices are near important technical levels just ahead of a Fed meeting. It seems that the S&P and Dow are destined to touch their October 10th lows but they're taking their sweet time in getting there. The S&P is only 9 points away from that low so it's almost guaranteed to touch it tomorrow. Perhaps that will spark some interesting action -- either another leg down or some serious buying.

I guess the VIX is headed to infinity ;-)

No changes

Despite last Friday's limit-down futures the Dow and S&P 500 managed to stay above their October lows. This morning the futures have come roaring back to near unchanged after some serious overnight weakness. So perhaps those October lows will be safe for at least another few hours...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- New Home Sales

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The indices had a good day yesterday but none of them has yet to surpass the highs put in around October 20th. The futures are a little weak right now but some backing & filling might actually be healthy. It would be nice for the bulls if they could keep the indices above their downrad sloping September trendlines.

On Today's Calendar:

• 9:45 -- Chicago PMI
• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The market's reversing yesterday's late selloff. Let's see if the bulls can push the indices above yesterday's highs and start to leave those September trendlines in the dust.

On Today's Calendar:

• nothing

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

It's usually a pretty safe bet that we'll get wild swings after Fed decision but we got a little extra today. An apparently bogus report on GE's 2009 outlook threw the market into a nose dive in the last 15 minutes of a day. That late selloff turned what was looking like some pretty good follow-through into what looks like failing retracements to trendlines on the Nasdaq and Russell 2000. All three of the charts below look like shorts to me under today's low.

The small caps made up for lagging yesterday with their outperformance today.

no changes

The futures are basically flat this morning but today's all about the Federal Reserve and the reaction to their interest rate decision at 2:15.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:35 -- Crude Inventories
• 2:15 -- FOMC Policy Statement

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We got another one of those vicious bear market rallies today. This one felt a lot like the one we had on October 13th. At the time it seemed like a game changing move but we know what happened to that rally. So once again we're looking a a good start that needs some follow-through. Despite the huge gains today there's still plenty of overhead resistance...

Some improvements in the short term trends but the small caps are lagging noticeably though. They've swung from leaders to laggards over the last few weeks.

Here's a story mainly for other bloggers...

Long time readers may remember that I've not been happy with Yahoo for a long time. I think it was about 4 years ago when they first contacted me about their plans to add blogs to Yahoo Finance. Those plans never came to fruition. I've also not been happy about the fact that their search engine doesn't seem to know my site exists. Well it looks like things are changing at Yahoo. They're now linking out to blogs and other sites just like the major newspapers started doing a few weeks ago.

This change is due to their acquisition of BuzzTracker. Here's a short interview with BuzzTracker's founder, Alan Warms, about the Yahoo News integration:

And here's a screen capture of the new "Most Blogged" feature that I saw this morning:

I doubt this stuff will help their stock recover but at least it'll make some bloggers happy.

It's all smiles on CNBC so you know we must be set to gap up this morning. In this recent global death spiral I've been wondering if our market has been following the foreign markets or were they following us. For today at least we're clearly following them. The bulls really need to build on this early strength and start making some higher highs and breaking some downtrends. As I write this QQQQ is still about 60 cents below yesterday's high. SO breaking that barrier would be a good start.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Consumer Confidence

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

There's a show airing on PBS this week that may interest some of you -- NOVA: Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension

What do movie special effects, the stock market, and heart attacks have in common? They are connected by a revolutionary new branch of math called fractals, which changed the way we see the world and opened up a vast new territory to scientific analysis and understanding. Meet the mathematicians who developed fractals from a mere curiosity to an approach that touches nearly every branch of understanding, including the fate of our universe.

On a related note, here's a video with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Benoit B. Mandelbrot, who's considered the 'father of fractals' and Taleb's mentor. In it they say that the current financial situation may the worst since the American Revolution.

And for even more extra credit see Mandelbrot's book The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward and/or his lecture on Fractals in Science, Engineering and Finance.

We had a particularly ugly close to today's session. The only minor positive today was that volume was relatively light. It's uncanny how often the indices are near important technical levels just ahead of a Fed meeting. It seems that the S&P and Dow are destined to touch their October 10th lows but they're taking their sweet time in getting there. The S&P is only 9 points away from that low so it's almost guaranteed to touch it tomorrow. Perhaps that will spark some interesting action -- either another leg down or some serious buying.

I guess the VIX is headed to infinity ;-)

No changes

Despite last Friday's limit-down futures the Dow and S&P 500 managed to stay above their October lows. This morning the futures have come roaring back to near unchanged after some serious overnight weakness. So perhaps those October lows will be safe for at least another few hours...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- New Home Sales

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The indices had a good day yesterday but none of them has yet to surpass the highs put in around October 20th. The futures are a little weak right now but some backing & filling might actually be healthy. It would be nice for the bulls if they could keep the indices above their downrad sloping September trendlines.

On Today's Calendar:

• 9:45 -- Chicago PMI
• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The market's reversing yesterday's late selloff. Let's see if the bulls can push the indices above yesterday's highs and start to leave those September trendlines in the dust.

On Today's Calendar:

• nothing

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

It's usually a pretty safe bet that we'll get wild swings after Fed decision but we got a little extra today. An apparently bogus report on GE's 2009 outlook threw the market into a nose dive in the last 15 minutes of a day. That late selloff turned what was looking like some pretty good follow-through into what looks like failing retracements to trendlines on the Nasdaq and Russell 2000. All three of the charts below look like shorts to me under today's low.

The small caps made up for lagging yesterday with their outperformance today.

no changes

The futures are basically flat this morning but today's all about the Federal Reserve and the reaction to their interest rate decision at 2:15.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:35 -- Crude Inventories
• 2:15 -- FOMC Policy Statement

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We got another one of those vicious bear market rallies today. This one felt a lot like the one we had on October 13th. At the time it seemed like a game changing move but we know what happened to that rally. So once again we're looking a a good start that needs some follow-through. Despite the huge gains today there's still plenty of overhead resistance...

Some improvements in the short term trends but the small caps are lagging noticeably though. They've swung from leaders to laggards over the last few weeks.

Here's a story mainly for other bloggers...

Long time readers may remember that I've not been happy with Yahoo for a long time. I think it was about 4 years ago when they first contacted me about their plans to add blogs to Yahoo Finance. Those plans never came to fruition. I've also not been happy about the fact that their search engine doesn't seem to know my site exists. Well it looks like things are changing at Yahoo. They're now linking out to blogs and other sites just like the major newspapers started doing a few weeks ago.

This change is due to their acquisition of BuzzTracker. Here's a short interview with BuzzTracker's founder, Alan Warms, about the Yahoo News integration:

And here's a screen capture of the new "Most Blogged" feature that I saw this morning:

I doubt this stuff will help their stock recover but at least it'll make some bloggers happy.

It's all smiles on CNBC so you know we must be set to gap up this morning. In this recent global death spiral I've been wondering if our market has been following the foreign markets or were they following us. For today at least we're clearly following them. The bulls really need to build on this early strength and start making some higher highs and breaking some downtrends. As I write this QQQQ is still about 60 cents below yesterday's high. SO breaking that barrier would be a good start.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Consumer Confidence

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

There's a show airing on PBS this week that may interest some of you -- NOVA: Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension

What do movie special effects, the stock market, and heart attacks have in common? They are connected by a revolutionary new branch of math called fractals, which changed the way we see the world and opened up a vast new territory to scientific analysis and understanding. Meet the mathematicians who developed fractals from a mere curiosity to an approach that touches nearly every branch of understanding, including the fate of our universe.

On a related note, here's a video with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Benoit B. Mandelbrot, who's considered the 'father of fractals' and Taleb's mentor. In it they say that the current financial situation may the worst since the American Revolution.

And for even more extra credit see Mandelbrot's book The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward and/or his lecture on Fractals in Science, Engineering and Finance.

We had a particularly ugly close to today's session. The only minor positive today was that volume was relatively light. It's uncanny how often the indices are near important technical levels just ahead of a Fed meeting. It seems that the S&P and Dow are destined to touch their October 10th lows but they're taking their sweet time in getting there. The S&P is only 9 points away from that low so it's almost guaranteed to touch it tomorrow. Perhaps that will spark some interesting action -- either another leg down or some serious buying.

I guess the VIX is headed to infinity ;-)

No changes

Despite last Friday's limit-down futures the Dow and S&P 500 managed to stay above their October lows. This morning the futures have come roaring back to near unchanged after some serious overnight weakness. So perhaps those October lows will be safe for at least another few hours...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- New Home Sales

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The indices had a good day yesterday but none of them has yet to surpass the highs put in around October 20th. The futures are a little weak right now but some backing & filling might actually be healthy. It would be nice for the bulls if they could keep the indices above their downrad sloping September trendlines.

On Today's Calendar:

• 9:45 -- Chicago PMI
• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The market's reversing yesterday's late selloff. Let's see if the bulls can push the indices above yesterday's highs and start to leave those September trendlines in the dust.

On Today's Calendar:

• nothing

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

It's usually a pretty safe bet that we'll get wild swings after Fed decision but we got a little extra today. An apparently bogus report on GE's 2009 outlook threw the market into a nose dive in the last 15 minutes of a day. That late selloff turned what was looking like some pretty good follow-through into what looks like failing retracements to trendlines on the Nasdaq and Russell 2000. All three of the charts below look like shorts to me under today's low.

The small caps made up for lagging yesterday with their outperformance today.

no changes

The futures are basically flat this morning but today's all about the Federal Reserve and the reaction to their interest rate decision at 2:15.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:35 -- Crude Inventories
• 2:15 -- FOMC Policy Statement

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We got another one of those vicious bear market rallies today. This one felt a lot like the one we had on October 13th. At the time it seemed like a game changing move but we know what happened to that rally. So once again we're looking a a good start that needs some follow-through. Despite the huge gains today there's still plenty of overhead resistance...

Some improvements in the short term trends but the small caps are lagging noticeably though. They've swung from leaders to laggards over the last few weeks.

Here's a story mainly for other bloggers...

Long time readers may remember that I've not been happy with Yahoo for a long time. I think it was about 4 years ago when they first contacted me about their plans to add blogs to Yahoo Finance. Those plans never came to fruition. I've also not been happy about the fact that their search engine doesn't seem to know my site exists. Well it looks like things are changing at Yahoo. They're now linking out to blogs and other sites just like the major newspapers started doing a few weeks ago.

This change is due to their acquisition of BuzzTracker. Here's a short interview with BuzzTracker's founder, Alan Warms, about the Yahoo News integration:

And here's a screen capture of the new "Most Blogged" feature that I saw this morning:

I doubt this stuff will help their stock recover but at least it'll make some bloggers happy.

It's all smiles on CNBC so you know we must be set to gap up this morning. In this recent global death spiral I've been wondering if our market has been following the foreign markets or were they following us. For today at least we're clearly following them. The bulls really need to build on this early strength and start making some higher highs and breaking some downtrends. As I write this QQQQ is still about 60 cents below yesterday's high. SO breaking that barrier would be a good start.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Consumer Confidence

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

There's a show airing on PBS this week that may interest some of you -- NOVA: Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension

What do movie special effects, the stock market, and heart attacks have in common? They are connected by a revolutionary new branch of math called fractals, which changed the way we see the world and opened up a vast new territory to scientific analysis and understanding. Meet the mathematicians who developed fractals from a mere curiosity to an approach that touches nearly every branch of understanding, including the fate of our universe.

On a related note, here's a video with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Benoit B. Mandelbrot, who's considered the 'father of fractals' and Taleb's mentor. In it they say that the current financial situation may the worst since the American Revolution.

And for even more extra credit see Mandelbrot's book The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward and/or his lecture on Fractals in Science, Engineering and Finance.

We had a particularly ugly close to today's session. The only minor positive today was that volume was relatively light. It's uncanny how often the indices are near important technical levels just ahead of a Fed meeting. It seems that the S&P and Dow are destined to touch their October 10th lows but they're taking their sweet time in getting there. The S&P is only 9 points away from that low so it's almost guaranteed to touch it tomorrow. Perhaps that will spark some interesting action -- either another leg down or some serious buying.

I guess the VIX is headed to infinity ;-)

No changes

Despite last Friday's limit-down futures the Dow and S&P 500 managed to stay above their October lows. This morning the futures have come roaring back to near unchanged after some serious overnight weakness. So perhaps those October lows will be safe for at least another few hours...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- New Home Sales

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The indices had a good day yesterday but none of them has yet to surpass the highs put in around October 20th. The futures are a little weak right now but some backing & filling might actually be healthy. It would be nice for the bulls if they could keep the indices above their downrad sloping September trendlines.

On Today's Calendar:

• 9:45 -- Chicago PMI
• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The market's reversing yesterday's late selloff. Let's see if the bulls can push the indices above yesterday's highs and start to leave those September trendlines in the dust.

On Today's Calendar:

• nothing

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

It's usually a pretty safe bet that we'll get wild swings after Fed decision but we got a little extra today. An apparently bogus report on GE's 2009 outlook threw the market into a nose dive in the last 15 minutes of a day. That late selloff turned what was looking like some pretty good follow-through into what looks like failing retracements to trendlines on the Nasdaq and Russell 2000. All three of the charts below look like shorts to me under today's low.

The small caps made up for lagging yesterday with their outperformance today.

no changes

The futures are basically flat this morning but today's all about the Federal Reserve and the reaction to their interest rate decision at 2:15.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:35 -- Crude Inventories
• 2:15 -- FOMC Policy Statement

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We got another one of those vicious bear market rallies today. This one felt a lot like the one we had on October 13th. At the time it seemed like a game changing move but we know what happened to that rally. So once again we're looking a a good start that needs some follow-through. Despite the huge gains today there's still plenty of overhead resistance...

Some improvements in the short term trends but the small caps are lagging noticeably though. They've swung from leaders to laggards over the last few weeks.

Here's a story mainly for other bloggers...

Long time readers may remember that I've not been happy with Yahoo for a long time. I think it was about 4 years ago when they first contacted me about their plans to add blogs to Yahoo Finance. Those plans never came to fruition. I've also not been happy about the fact that their search engine doesn't seem to know my site exists. Well it looks like things are changing at Yahoo. They're now linking out to blogs and other sites just like the major newspapers started doing a few weeks ago.

This change is due to their acquisition of BuzzTracker. Here's a short interview with BuzzTracker's founder, Alan Warms, about the Yahoo News integration:

And here's a screen capture of the new "Most Blogged" feature that I saw this morning:

I doubt this stuff will help their stock recover but at least it'll make some bloggers happy.

It's all smiles on CNBC so you know we must be set to gap up this morning. In this recent global death spiral I've been wondering if our market has been following the foreign markets or were they following us. For today at least we're clearly following them. The bulls really need to build on this early strength and start making some higher highs and breaking some downtrends. As I write this QQQQ is still about 60 cents below yesterday's high. SO breaking that barrier would be a good start.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Consumer Confidence

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

There's a show airing on PBS this week that may interest some of you -- NOVA: Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension

What do movie special effects, the stock market, and heart attacks have in common? They are connected by a revolutionary new branch of math called fractals, which changed the way we see the world and opened up a vast new territory to scientific analysis and understanding. Meet the mathematicians who developed fractals from a mere curiosity to an approach that touches nearly every branch of understanding, including the fate of our universe.

On a related note, here's a video with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Benoit B. Mandelbrot, who's considered the 'father of fractals' and Taleb's mentor. In it they say that the current financial situation may the worst since the American Revolution.

And for even more extra credit see Mandelbrot's book The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward and/or his lecture on Fractals in Science, Engineering and Finance.

We had a particularly ugly close to today's session. The only minor positive today was that volume was relatively light. It's uncanny how often the indices are near important technical levels just ahead of a Fed meeting. It seems that the S&P and Dow are destined to touch their October 10th lows but they're taking their sweet time in getting there. The S&P is only 9 points away from that low so it's almost guaranteed to touch it tomorrow. Perhaps that will spark some interesting action -- either another leg down or some serious buying.

I guess the VIX is headed to infinity ;-)

No changes

Despite last Friday's limit-down futures the Dow and S&P 500 managed to stay above their October lows. This morning the futures have come roaring back to near unchanged after some serious overnight weakness. So perhaps those October lows will be safe for at least another few hours...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- New Home Sales

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The indices had a good day yesterday but none of them has yet to surpass the highs put in around October 20th. The futures are a little weak right now but some backing & filling might actually be healthy. It would be nice for the bulls if they could keep the indices above their downrad sloping September trendlines.

On Today's Calendar:

• 9:45 -- Chicago PMI
• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The market's reversing yesterday's late selloff. Let's see if the bulls can push the indices above yesterday's highs and start to leave those September trendlines in the dust.

On Today's Calendar:

• nothing

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

It's usually a pretty safe bet that we'll get wild swings after Fed decision but we got a little extra today. An apparently bogus report on GE's 2009 outlook threw the market into a nose dive in the last 15 minutes of a day. That late selloff turned what was looking like some pretty good follow-through into what looks like failing retracements to trendlines on the Nasdaq and Russell 2000. All three of the charts below look like shorts to me under today's low.

The small caps made up for lagging yesterday with their outperformance today.

no changes

The futures are basically flat this morning but today's all about the Federal Reserve and the reaction to their interest rate decision at 2:15.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:35 -- Crude Inventories
• 2:15 -- FOMC Policy Statement

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We got another one of those vicious bear market rallies today. This one felt a lot like the one we had on October 13th. At the time it seemed like a game changing move but we know what happened to that rally. So once again we're looking a a good start that needs some follow-through. Despite the huge gains today there's still plenty of overhead resistance...

Some improvements in the short term trends but the small caps are lagging noticeably though. They've swung from leaders to laggards over the last few weeks.

Here's a story mainly for other bloggers...

Long time readers may remember that I've not been happy with Yahoo for a long time. I think it was about 4 years ago when they first contacted me about their plans to add blogs to Yahoo Finance. Those plans never came to fruition. I've also not been happy about the fact that their search engine doesn't seem to know my site exists. Well it looks like things are changing at Yahoo. They're now linking out to blogs and other sites just like the major newspapers started doing a few weeks ago.

This change is due to their acquisition of BuzzTracker. Here's a short interview with BuzzTracker's founder, Alan Warms, about the Yahoo News integration:

And here's a screen capture of the new "Most Blogged" feature that I saw this morning:

I doubt this stuff will help their stock recover but at least it'll make some bloggers happy.

It's all smiles on CNBC so you know we must be set to gap up this morning. In this recent global death spiral I've been wondering if our market has been following the foreign markets or were they following us. For today at least we're clearly following them. The bulls really need to build on this early strength and start making some higher highs and breaking some downtrends. As I write this QQQQ is still about 60 cents below yesterday's high. SO breaking that barrier would be a good start.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Consumer Confidence

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

There's a show airing on PBS this week that may interest some of you -- NOVA: Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension

What do movie special effects, the stock market, and heart attacks have in common? They are connected by a revolutionary new branch of math called fractals, which changed the way we see the world and opened up a vast new territory to scientific analysis and understanding. Meet the mathematicians who developed fractals from a mere curiosity to an approach that touches nearly every branch of understanding, including the fate of our universe.

On a related note, here's a video with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Benoit B. Mandelbrot, who's considered the 'father of fractals' and Taleb's mentor. In it they say that the current financial situation may the worst since the American Revolution.

And for even more extra credit see Mandelbrot's book The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward and/or his lecture on Fractals in Science, Engineering and Finance.

We had a particularly ugly close to today's session. The only minor positive today was that volume was relatively light. It's uncanny how often the indices are near important technical levels just ahead of a Fed meeting. It seems that the S&P and Dow are destined to touch their October 10th lows but they're taking their sweet time in getting there. The S&P is only 9 points away from that low so it's almost guaranteed to touch it tomorrow. Perhaps that will spark some interesting action -- either another leg down or some serious buying.

I guess the VIX is headed to infinity ;-)

No changes

Despite last Friday's limit-down futures the Dow and S&P 500 managed to stay above their October lows. This morning the futures have come roaring back to near unchanged after some serious overnight weakness. So perhaps those October lows will be safe for at least another few hours...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- New Home Sales

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The indices had a good day yesterday but none of them has yet to surpass the highs put in around October 20th. The futures are a little weak right now but some backing & filling might actually be healthy. It would be nice for the bulls if they could keep the indices above their downrad sloping September trendlines.

On Today's Calendar:

• 9:45 -- Chicago PMI
• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The market's reversing yesterday's late selloff. Let's see if the bulls can push the indices above yesterday's highs and start to leave those September trendlines in the dust.

On Today's Calendar:

• nothing

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

It's usually a pretty safe bet that we'll get wild swings after Fed decision but we got a little extra today. An apparently bogus report on GE's 2009 outlook threw the market into a nose dive in the last 15 minutes of a day. That late selloff turned what was looking like some pretty good follow-through into what looks like failing retracements to trendlines on the Nasdaq and Russell 2000. All three of the charts below look like shorts to me under today's low.

The small caps made up for lagging yesterday with their outperformance today.

no changes

The futures are basically flat this morning but today's all about the Federal Reserve and the reaction to their interest rate decision at 2:15.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:35 -- Crude Inventories
• 2:15 -- FOMC Policy Statement

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We got another one of those vicious bear market rallies today. This one felt a lot like the one we had on October 13th. At the time it seemed like a game changing move but we know what happened to that rally. So once again we're looking a a good start that needs some follow-through. Despite the huge gains today there's still plenty of overhead resistance...

Some improvements in the short term trends but the small caps are lagging noticeably though. They've swung from leaders to laggards over the last few weeks.

Here's a story mainly for other bloggers...

Long time readers may remember that I've not been happy with Yahoo for a long time. I think it was about 4 years ago when they first contacted me about their plans to add blogs to Yahoo Finance. Those plans never came to fruition. I've also not been happy about the fact that their search engine doesn't seem to know my site exists. Well it looks like things are changing at Yahoo. They're now linking out to blogs and other sites just like the major newspapers started doing a few weeks ago.

This change is due to their acquisition of BuzzTracker. Here's a short interview with BuzzTracker's founder, Alan Warms, about the Yahoo News integration:

And here's a screen capture of the new "Most Blogged" feature that I saw this morning:

I doubt this stuff will help their stock recover but at least it'll make some bloggers happy.

It's all smiles on CNBC so you know we must be set to gap up this morning. In this recent global death spiral I've been wondering if our market has been following the foreign markets or were they following us. For today at least we're clearly following them. The bulls really need to build on this early strength and start making some higher highs and breaking some downtrends. As I write this QQQQ is still about 60 cents below yesterday's high. SO breaking that barrier would be a good start.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Consumer Confidence

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

There's a show airing on PBS this week that may interest some of you -- NOVA: Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension

What do movie special effects, the stock market, and heart attacks have in common? They are connected by a revolutionary new branch of math called fractals, which changed the way we see the world and opened up a vast new territory to scientific analysis and understanding. Meet the mathematicians who developed fractals from a mere curiosity to an approach that touches nearly every branch of understanding, including the fate of our universe.

On a related note, here's a video with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Benoit B. Mandelbrot, who's considered the 'father of fractals' and Taleb's mentor. In it they say that the current financial situation may the worst since the American Revolution.

And for even more extra credit see Mandelbrot's book The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward and/or his lecture on Fractals in Science, Engineering and Finance.

We had a particularly ugly close to today's session. The only minor positive today was that volume was relatively light. It's uncanny how often the indices are near important technical levels just ahead of a Fed meeting. It seems that the S&P and Dow are destined to touch their October 10th lows but they're taking their sweet time in getting there. The S&P is only 9 points away from that low so it's almost guaranteed to touch it tomorrow. Perhaps that will spark some interesting action -- either another leg down or some serious buying.

I guess the VIX is headed to infinity ;-)

No changes

Despite last Friday's limit-down futures the Dow and S&P 500 managed to stay above their October lows. This morning the futures have come roaring back to near unchanged after some serious overnight weakness. So perhaps those October lows will be safe for at least another few hours...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- New Home Sales

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The indices had a good day yesterday but none of them has yet to surpass the highs put in around October 20th. The futures are a little weak right now but some backing & filling might actually be healthy. It would be nice for the bulls if they could keep the indices above their downrad sloping September trendlines.

On Today's Calendar:

• 9:45 -- Chicago PMI
• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The market's reversing yesterday's late selloff. Let's see if the bulls can push the indices above yesterday's highs and start to leave those September trendlines in the dust.

On Today's Calendar:

• nothing

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

It's usually a pretty safe bet that we'll get wild swings after Fed decision but we got a little extra today. An apparently bogus report on GE's 2009 outlook threw the market into a nose dive in the last 15 minutes of a day. That late selloff turned what was looking like some pretty good follow-through into what looks like failing retracements to trendlines on the Nasdaq and Russell 2000. All three of the charts below look like shorts to me under today's low.

The small caps made up for lagging yesterday with their outperformance today.

no changes

The futures are basically flat this morning but today's all about the Federal Reserve and the reaction to their interest rate decision at 2:15.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:35 -- Crude Inventories
• 2:15 -- FOMC Policy Statement

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We got another one of those vicious bear market rallies today. This one felt a lot like the one we had on October 13th. At the time it seemed like a game changing move but we know what happened to that rally. So once again we're looking a a good start that needs some follow-through. Despite the huge gains today there's still plenty of overhead resistance...

Some improvements in the short term trends but the small caps are lagging noticeably though. They've swung from leaders to laggards over the last few weeks.

Here's a story mainly for other bloggers...

Long time readers may remember that I've not been happy with Yahoo for a long time. I think it was about 4 years ago when they first contacted me about their plans to add blogs to Yahoo Finance. Those plans never came to fruition. I've also not been happy about the fact that their search engine doesn't seem to know my site exists. Well it looks like things are changing at Yahoo. They're now linking out to blogs and other sites just like the major newspapers started doing a few weeks ago.

This change is due to their acquisition of BuzzTracker. Here's a short interview with BuzzTracker's founder, Alan Warms, about the Yahoo News integration:

And here's a screen capture of the new "Most Blogged" feature that I saw this morning:

I doubt this stuff will help their stock recover but at least it'll make some bloggers happy.

It's all smiles on CNBC so you know we must be set to gap up this morning. In this recent global death spiral I've been wondering if our market has been following the foreign markets or were they following us. For today at least we're clearly following them. The bulls really need to build on this early strength and start making some higher highs and breaking some downtrends. As I write this QQQQ is still about 60 cents below yesterday's high. SO breaking that barrier would be a good start.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- Consumer Confidence

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

There's a show airing on PBS this week that may interest some of you -- NOVA: Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension

What do movie special effects, the stock market, and heart attacks have in common? They are connected by a revolutionary new branch of math called fractals, which changed the way we see the world and opened up a vast new territory to scientific analysis and understanding. Meet the mathematicians who developed fractals from a mere curiosity to an approach that touches nearly every branch of understanding, including the fate of our universe.

On a related note, here's a video with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Benoit B. Mandelbrot, who's considered the 'father of fractals' and Taleb's mentor. In it they say that the current financial situation may the worst since the American Revolution.

And for even more extra credit see Mandelbrot's book The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward and/or his lecture on Fractals in Science, Engineering and Finance.

We had a particularly ugly close to today's session. The only minor positive today was that volume was relatively light. It's uncanny how often the indices are near important technical levels just ahead of a Fed meeting. It seems that the S&P and Dow are destined to touch their October 10th lows but they're taking their sweet time in getting there. The S&P is only 9 points away from that low so it's almost guaranteed to touch it tomorrow. Perhaps that will spark some interesting action -- either another leg down or some serious buying.

I guess the VIX is headed to infinity ;-)

No changes

Despite last Friday's limit-down futures the Dow and S&P 500 managed to stay above their October lows. This morning the futures have come roaring back to near unchanged after some serious overnight weakness. So perhaps those October lows will be safe for at least another few hours...

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:00 -- New Home Sales

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The indices had a good day yesterday but none of them has yet to surpass the highs put in around October 20th. The futures are a little weak right now but some backing & filling might actually be healthy. It would be nice for the bulls if they could keep the indices above their downrad sloping September trendlines.

On Today's Calendar:

• 9:45 -- Chicago PMI
• 10:00 -- Mich Sentiment-Rev.

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

The market's reversing yesterday's late selloff. Let's see if the bulls can push the indices above yesterday's highs and start to leave those September trendlines in the dust.

On Today's Calendar:

• nothing

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

It's usually a pretty safe bet that we'll get wild swings after Fed decision but we got a little extra today. An apparently bogus report on GE's 2009 outlook threw the market into a nose dive in the last 15 minutes of a day. That late selloff turned what was looking like some pretty good follow-through into what looks like failing retracements to trendlines on the Nasdaq and Russell 2000. All three of the charts below look like shorts to me under today's low.

The small caps made up for lagging yesterday with their outperformance today.

no changes

The futures are basically flat this morning but today's all about the Federal Reserve and the reaction to their interest rate decision at 2:15.

On Today's Calendar:

• 10:35 -- Crude Inventories
• 2:15 -- FOMC Policy Statement

More Calendars: U.S. Earnings | Conf. Calls | Surprises | IPO | Economic

Potential swing trades:

We got another one of those vicious bear market rallies today. This one felt a lot like the one we had on October 13th. At the time it seemed like a game changing move but we know what happened to that rally. So once again we're looking a a good start that needs some follow-through. Despite the huge gains today there's still plenty of overhead resistance...

Some improvements in the short term trends but the small caps are lagging noticeably though. They've swung from leaders to laggards over the last few weeks.